[muawiyah]

Been suppressing it in my mind, but there was a time I was in the same boat as the guys at Benghazi - it was the night of 20–21 August 1968, there we were on a hillside watching a road in Czechoslovakia and here came the Russian Army with tanks and trucks, and thousands of troops ~ and the only thing between us and them was a minefield designed to stop civilians.

We reported the event up the line.

They got back to us 6 days later with some orders ~ thank goodness there was no running battle going on ~ our machinegun was broken so all we had were 6 rounds each plus our pistols ~ if we had been issued a pistol.

What made me mad ~ and the only thing ~ was this young buck Lieutenant with us who didn't want to call in the event. His argument was it was just a road and it was in a foreign country, and they ran tanks and trucks up and down it all the time ~ our argument was that 500 motor vehicles in a couple of hours was NOT NORMAL so our orders were to report it.

Besides, like I just noted, we were low on ammunition.

George McGovern lost my vote of course ~ and that of all the other guys out there on that observation point, and probably most of the guys in USAREUR in the '68 election.

Wasn't supposed to be any war going on in Europe that year ~ they promised ~ and there it was ~ a hair's breadth away ~ our jets and their migs nose to nose along the border from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, and a thin tripwire of expendable guys down on the ground.

The Democrats were in charge that time too ~ blew it bad. They are not educable.

[piasa]

Wasn’t it August 28, same month as your observation in europe, that the US Ambassador to Guatamal was assassinated?

[piasa]

Wasn’t it August 28, same month as your observation in europe, that the US Ambassador to Guatamala was assassinated?

[arrogantsob]

Interesting tale sounds pretty damn scary, but what does McGovern have to do with it. No one had heard much about him in 68.